Version 2.81 of the OpenGUI graphics library has been released. This version has totally rewritten the Window portion for betterperformance and more simplicity. Window operations in this version are approximately 10-15% faster than the previous 2.2x branch. For a detailed list of the changes, browse the Changelog.

Rick Bischoff has written areviewof Heretic IIfor 32BitsOnline. The review coverssystem requirements, installation, tutorial, a bit of the game’s story andobjectives, issues getting the game to work properly, weapons, and game control.

Well… the big news of the day (and possibly the week), is that Bungie Software was acquired by none other than Microsoft, who will be forging Bungie’s sci-fi action game Halo into a title for their upcoming console system, Xbox. Bungie, long considered one of the last bastions of MacOS advocacy in the gaming market, developed Myth 2: Soulblighter, which was ported to Linux by Loki.Fortunately (despite how bleak things appear), Bungie has added a FAQ with regards tothe acquisition which includes a nod to possible future Linux ports:

What about Linux?

If we do a Linux version, we would probably contract someone outside the company to port and distribute the game, much as we did with Myth II.

The distributors of the new Linux titles being ported by Hyperion Software have announced that the expected release dates for Shogo: Mobile Armor Division and Sin will be august and september respectively.Tux Games has announced availability of pre-order facilities for both Sin and Shogo.

Both titles’ distribution is being handled by Titan Computer; Hyperion also has a contract to port the current version of the LithTech 3D engine to Linux.

The FreeCNC project has updated with a progress report regarding their free implementation of the Command & Conquer engine (Note: similar to the Freecraft effort -Crusader). Current features include decoding/playing of the sounds from the game (including the music tracks); graphics (.SHP and .CSP) have been decoded also. If you are interested in helping this project, e-mail Kareemy or visit them on irc at #freecnc on irc.bleuh.net.

Christian Zander has added, with the aid of NVIDIA’s Terence Ripperda, AGPGART support to a modified version of the NVIDIA Linux kernel module for systems utilizing VIA VP3/MVP3 or ALi 1542 chipset motherboards, among others. Documentation on installation, configuration, and troubleshooting is available here.

Based on requests from Yippee38 and Icebalm, we’ve added a petition which asksAureal to open their “register level specifications and possibly source code that would enable thecreation of stereo sound drivers for the very popular AU88x0 “Vortex” sound processors on operating systems such as Linux, BSD and others”.The situation is critical due to Aureal’s recently announced Chapter 11 bankruptcy; please spread the word about thisto ensure that the Aureal product line can survive regardless of the company’s ultimate fate. The petition will run through the rest of this month, upon which the signatures will be sent off to Aureal.

Gamers Central has posted their preview of Funcom’ssci-fi MMORPG Anarchy Online, which is being developedfor the Linux platform. This preview, spanning three pages with included screenshots, gives an overviewof the dynamics and environment that will comprise the game world upon release.

Furthermore, the official site has launched a digest version of their BB where Funcom’s Tor Andre will compile interesting forum discussions for easier reading.

The Citadel has posted E3 gameplay footage from Lionhead’s upcoming god-game Black & White, which designer Peter Molyneux has boldly stated will be an open-source (although under a non-GPL license) game with Linux support. The new movie shows gameplay basics, and weighs in at around 35 megs:

Will there be a linux server version available ? Many game servers run on Linux (including ours ;p)

Don’t know about server, as explained earlier. But, we are converting our engine on Linux.

The Serious Engine is currently being utilized in their fast-action FPS Serious Sam, which features large, open areas and hordes of monsters not seen since the days of sprite-based engines (indeed, the fact that a dev group based in Eastern Europe has shown up the entire American gaming industry has struck the FPS community like a bolt from the proverbial blue).

This release is a special release of SMPEG, with support for arbitraryscaling, seeking, and improved time synchronization. This release ofSMPEG also works on Win32 and BeOS, but are not officially supported onthose platforms.

Special thanks to Vivien Chappelier and Damien Chavarria for the greatlyimproved system stream parsing and seeking support.

Thanks to Manuel Estrada for packet timesync, Robert Dean for drag-n-dropsupport, Markus Overhumer for Visual C++ cleanups, and to HiroshiYamashita and Mo DeJong for general fixes and enhancements.

The German gaming site Zocks has published a pair of Linux-related articles. The first is an interview with Bernd Kreimeier from Loki. This interview includes both German and English versions of the questions and Bernd’s answers in English. The interview covers Loki’s current status, availability (or lack of) upgrades from a win32 box to Linux binaries, hardware, libraries, 3D acceleration, and performace comparisons between platforms.

The second is an article covering Linux at this year’s E3 expo. The article is in German.

For those of you that can’t read the German-only parts of the site, Babel Fish it.